


Light Up (You've been the only thing that's right in all I've done)

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drama, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-21
Updated: 2006-08-21
Packaged: 2019-01-19 15:09:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12412671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: "You're so smart Hermione. How can you not see this?" he asked her, standing beside the table. She wouldn't look up at him, and he knew there were probably tears in her eyes. "What are you going to tell your child, when you have new bruises in the morning? What are you going to tell them when they see him ...





	Light Up (You've been the only thing that's right in all I've done)

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

**Light Up (You've been the only thing that's right in all I've done)  
By** unperfectwolf  
 **Archive:** let me know first, yes?  
 **Rated:** PG13  
 **Warnings:** domestic violence, some EvilBastard!Ron, and not-very-nice!Harry and !Ginny.  
 **Fandom, Pairing:** Harry Potter Un., Seamus Finnegan/Hermione Granger (Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger)  
 **Summary:** "You're so smart Hermione. How can you not see this?" he asked her, standing beside the table. She wouldn't look up at him, and he knew there were probably tears in her eyes. "What are you going to tell your child, when you have new bruises in the morning? What are you going to tell them when they see him hit you?" he paused. "What are you going to do when he hits _them_?"  
 **Disclaimer:** not mine, never was mine, never will be mine. all is jk rowling's.  
 **Word Count:** ~5,475  
 **Authors Notes:** I have absolutely no idea where this came from. I knew it was going to start with "When the war ended, everyone…" and I knew that it was going to be Seamus/Hermione and I knew that Ron was going to be a evil git and that Harry was going to have no clue as to what he was doing, but not a whole hell of a lot else. Abigail was actually inspired by a cat at work who's got chronic asthma we can't seem to help. Hope this isn't too bad. Highly influenced by Snow Patrols record "Final Straw", if the lyrics didn't tell you that :) Title from "Run", group of lyrics from "Chocolate" (tracks seven and six, respectively).

_Goodness knows I saw it coming_  
Or at least I'll claim I did  
But in truth I'm lost for words  
What have I done it's too late for that  
What have I become truth is nothing yet  
A simple mistake starts the hardest time  
Snow Patrol, "Chocolate"

**LIGHT UP  
(YOU'VE BEEN THE ONLY THING THAT'S RIGHT IN ALL I'VE DONE)**

When the war ended, everyone was willing to forget that it had happened. It wasn't as if they denied it when it was spoken of, but instead they just tried as hard as possible not to bring it up, ever.

The problem with this was that an entire generation of witches and wizards had grown up with the name Voldemort a synonym to fear and the name Harry Potter a synonym to hope. It was ingrained in their speech patterns and their memories and their friendships. It was ingrained in their dreams and their nightmares.

They made a valiant effort to be like the rest of the wizarding world. Those who had known Harry Potter personally never flaunted it, only mentioning him in passing to others who had known him. Those who had never really gotten to know him never mentioned him at all, unless in conjunction to talking about something that had happened long before that had little to do with the war.

Because of this, the tight knit friendships from Hogwarts came undone as soon as they left the ancient school. It was too hard to act like they were supposed to if they stayed in the same circles, to hard to not acknowledge the forbidden topics when they still ate lunch together. So, instead, they scattered across Europe.

Other countries never questioned why the best and the brightest that Hogwarts had turned out in decades were fleeing from the UK. In smaller circles, behind closed doors, they often speculated, asking themselves why the groups formed at Hogwarts, the ones that had helped bring down Voldemort and his dark troops, hadn't been seen together since they'd all graduated. But they never asked anyone else, at least not out loud.

Most of the classes got together periodically — 5 years, 10 years, 15 years after they had graduated — and reminisced for a single night. One class, though, never did.

That was Harry Potters class.

Instead, a good amount of those never came back from where they had finally gone after graduation. They stayed holed up in quiet corners, never speaking their names too loudly for fear that someone might remember it from the papers, or someone they had known might appear. They never called home — in fact many of them weren't connected to the floo at all, or if they were, could only make calls, and not receive incoming floo's. Most of them had small jobs for small time employers, in back rooms, as researchers or potions makers or spell creators.

They were a quiet lot, never really speaking of their lives to anyone else, never talking about past times or the future. They were more than good at slipping into shadows and disappearing and did it more often than most realized.

People were used to it. Sometimes, if they were forgetful enough, someone would start to tell someone things like "They graduated in 1998, you know," or "They fought in the final battle, you know." As time went on, fewer and fewer people ever said anything, but more and more people seemed to know.

To a one, none of them had jobs at any Ministries anywhere in the world. None of them worked for them, or for companies that did so. Even those that had supported Voldemort's cause didn't touch a job at a Ministry.

Not, of course, that they weren't offered jobs there. Nearly everyone in that year had been offered a job by a Ministry, somewhere. But the Ministry had betrayed them, lied to them and screwed them over so many times that they'd given up. There was no trust, and no way for it to be gained.

Even though no one spoke of the war, everyone remembered it and everyone knew that if you needed something done with a better than average skill, you went to the group that had graduated from Hogwarts with Harry Potter. They had, of course, been the only ones to fight Voldemort in the end.

They had helped kill him, after all.

Neither of the two figures sitting in the shadowed corner table in the bar ever spoke of these things. It wasn't as if they were afraid to, it was just that there was nothing left to say. They'd both been there, they'd both seen what had happened. They both knew all of the details they could ever want to, and more in some cases.

Instead they talked of their lives now, slowly and sporadically. They didn't speak much these days, not with nearly ten years between now and the friendship they'd once had.

They'd been there almost an hour — their time limit these days, one that she imposed on them silently and one that he never pushed her to break. He knew, with out her telling him, why she never stayed longer. It was one of the unspoken things between them, things they never had to share and both just knew.

He knew though, that it wasn't a special thing between them. Most of those who had been in their year would have understood the unspoken message from the bushy haired witch across from him.

She swirled her drink — non alcoholic, which was a bit unusual, but not something to comment on — before she looked up at him. "I went to see a mediwitch last week."

This, however, was. "Really?" the wizard asked casually after a moment, and not as if his heart had leapt into his throat when she'd said that.

"Really," she told him. "About that flu I had last time, the one that Pepper-Up only helped for a bit with."

He nodded, waiting. She'd tell him the rest in her own time.

"Seamus," she whispered, after a minute or two of silence that stretched on and on his mind. "I'm pregnant."

 

Nearly a month later, in a different dark bar — muggle ones, because the chances of running into anyone they knew were much slimmer in them — the two sat across from either other again.

"Hermione," he called her name softly. She glanced up quickly, her face blanking as she did so. But he saw the shock there anyways. They didn't much speak each others names these days.

The world had ears, after all.

"Hermione," he called her again. She looked up again, but this time she didn't look back down again. He reached across the table and touched her chin softly, turning her face so that he could see the right side better. "You can't keep letting him do this to you, Hermione."

She shrugged, leaning back out of his grasp. "He promised this will stop. That he'll stop drinking."

Seamus snorted, though quietly enough that even if there hadn't been a silencing spell and a notice-me-not charm in place, no one would have heard. They'd all gotten very good at not attracting attention.

"Oh, yeah, it'll stop. That's right. Because Ron Weasley has the ability to change, let alone keep his promises," the man snapped out before he could help himself. He nearly regretted his words, despite the truth in them.

You didn't speak of happenings from the war, after all.

"He _promised_ he will, Seamus," the woman pleaded, to him or to herself neither knew, as she leaned forward.

He snorted. "He _promised_ he'd never see Lav again, back in Year 7, and look how that turned out. He's been cheating on you for years. He _promised_ he'd not drink as much, once you got married, and he drinks more now. He _promised_ he'd never hurt you, what, nine years ago? And look at you now!"

Hermione nearly cowered from the anger in his voice, and the man calmed immediately. "God, Hermione, I'm so sorry. I'm not mad at you, love," he told her leaning across the table and taking her hands in his. "I'd never hurt you love, and I've never broken my word to you, either."

Hermione closed her eyes for a moment, thinking, but Seamus knew what she'd say before she started. "He promised he'd really try this time, Seamus."

He stood suddenly, dropping her hands to the table and grabbing his jacket from the bench beside him. "You're so smart Hermione. How can you not see this?" he asked her, standing beside the table. She wouldn't look up at him, and he knew there were probably tears in her eyes. "What are you going to tell your child, when you have new bruises in the morning? What are you going to tell them when they see him hit you?" he paused. "What are you going to do when he hits _them_?"

He threw some money down and walked away, but he knew the tears fell all the same.

 

Sean O'Conner didn't come across mysteries like the woman standing in front of him often, and each time he did it somehow had something to do with the world he knew about, but rarely got to experience. This meant it was all the more intriguing, because mentions of that world had become fewer and farther between in the last ten years or so. But even so, the long time bartender knew this wasn't going to be a happy mystery, not from the way she was glancing around, her eyes darting from one local to the next, as if to assess their danger to her. It wasn't something he saw much of, even if had had been bartending for a long while.

He'd started bartending when his Uncle had passed on, back when he was only 19 or so. His farther, who'd ended up with the pub then, hadn't had a clue what he was to do with. Sean, and his brother Red, had spent every waking minute around there since they could remember and had taken over with out question. Red had eventually gone off to go to university over in England and their father had passed away nearly ten years before, right after his nephew had graduated from some fancy school in Scotland and come home.

Since then it had just been him and his nephew working the pub, along with various female relatives who waitresses for them during high school. He hadn't really known why him nephew had decided to come back from school and work the pub. His sister had muttered something about a boy named Harry Potter, but had never really explained.

It wasn't that Sean didn't know who Harry Potter was. He'd known about the war that had waged in a world he was only vaguely part of, back in the seventies and into the very early eighties. Their pub was one of the fringe places in Ireland that while holding a "muggle front", as the witches and wizards called it, catered to people of all kinds. In the less built up places, it wasn't that uncommon. The Irish remembered, through hearth tales and family legends, what it was like before the separation. While most of them knocked such stories as just that, stories, there were those who knew the truth.

But when this new war had come up, no one had said much after the first couple years of denial. The problems here in Ireland were more trouble and it made it much easier for the witches and wizards he knew to gloss over the problems in their own world.

He'd known something had gone wrong in his nephew's last few years of school. Something had happened and his sister had become a worried mess, taking little comfort in anything. In the last one, she'd become nearly frantic, yet wouldn't say why. When his nephew returned at the end of the year, he hadn't said a word to her about anything. After nearly a minute, she'd nodded slowly and he'd turned away.

Two days later, his nephew had moved not far from the pub and told Sean that if he need him, he would be around for a while.

He hadn't left yet.

 

When she came into the pub, the child was hidden beneath her cloak. It was only when she lifted a hand to push her long bushy hair back behind one of her ears that the bundle she held in her other arm became noticeable. Sean knew right away that something was wrong, but he wouldn't find out until much later just how wrong things had gone for the young woman in witch's attire.

Sean had been a bartender for a long while now. He was used to being able to look at someone and tell when something was wrong, and for the most part, what. This one was different, cloaked in secrecy like he rarely saw.

She'd come in on a Tuesday night, well after dark. The locals all turned to look at her, but there wasn't much to see, not with the way she was wrapped. She came to the empty end of the bar, looking at him from deep in the shadows of the cloak's hood. He'd gone down towards her right away, his curiosity perked.

"Can I help you, ma'am?" he asked, schooling his accent to be as bland as possible.

She hesitated before reaching up and pushing her hood back some. He'd made sure not to show any reaction to her, but deep inside his rage began to build. "I need to find Seamus Finnegan," she told him, finally. Her voice was soft, and like his nephew's, didn't carry farther than she wanted. He wondered, deep in the back of mind, where they'd learned it.

"Seamus, eh? My no good nephew don't have anything to do with the way your face is looking, now does he?" he asked, just to be sure. He'd never seen the woman before, and he didn't think Seamus would ever hit a woman, but something had happened back in his last year of school that had given his nephew a side that he'd never understand.

The woman shook her head quickly and empathetically. "Never. Seamus wouldn't…" she paused. "He'd never break a promise," she finally told him.

Sean wondered what that promise could be, but didn't press it. "He lives down the street a bit. Let me go call him in, yeah?"

She hesitated. "Can't you just… tell me how to find him?"

He gave her a level look. "It's pouring down rain and dark as all out there and you want to take that child back out there to hunt for a house that's hard to find anyways?"

The woman sighed, lowering her gaze. "I just don't want to cause anyone any trouble, sir."

He knew then that whatever was going on in her life was serious. He'd met a few women like her in his time, skittish and never wanting to be any trouble. Whenever you asked questions or got to close, they backed off. He wondered why she was looking for his nephew. "No trouble at all, ma'am. Let me go in the back and call him, alright? Have a seat, I'll be right back."

She nodded, taking a seat and wrapping her child tighter in the fold of her cloak.

 

When she looks back, Hermione knows she should have expected something like that from Seamus. But when he came in the door, shaking the rain from the hood of his jacket, his eyes searching her out, she didn't even stop and think before she launched her self into his arms.

When she'd backed off a bit, he looked down into her arms, a smile coming over his face. "Finally getting to meet Abigail Athena, am I?"

She nodded and from the bar, Sean had eyed them, wondering about the strange closeness he could see in the pair, though it was obvious whatever had caused it was long buried.

"Yes, you are." She smiled up at him, though it was a tired smile, one that told of someone who'd held on to long to a sinking ship. He looked up at her then, the smile slipping from his face.

"God, Hermione," he turned her face so he could see one side, then the other. "Did he do this?"

She nodded, reaching up with her free hand to touch her blackened left eye self consciously. The gash on her cheek was crusted shut, but the smile she'd given him the minute before had opened her split lip. "I… I left him, Seamus. For good."

The man blinked for a few seconds before pulling her into another hug. "Good. God, Hermione… Fuck." He held her for another moment, before leaning back. "Just… Good."

She knew what he meant, and nodded. "He might not have gotten the point, though… He was…" she paused, searching. Finally, she sighed. "He was really drunk, this time, Seamus."

It was then that two Irish Policemen strolled in, walking up to the bar. Sean motioned to the two of them, off to the side where they'd managed to tuck themselves, away from the prying eyes and wandering ears of the locals. When Hermione saw them, her eyes widened. "Seamus! What… Why?" she nearly begged him.

"Calm down. They're muggles. And I'll be right here, the whole time," he promised her. "But you need to do this, love."

The two officers approached them slowly. "Seamus?" one of them questioned.

Seamus nodded. "Ryan, Colin, this is Hermione. Hermione this is my cousin, Ryan O'Conner and a friend of ours, Colin Mallory. Guys, this is Hermione, a friend of mine from school."

Ryan rocked back a little at this. "Shouldn't you have called, uh," he glanced at Colin, "The others?" While many of them did know about the witches and wizards who lived with them, not everyone did, and it wasn't something you ever wanted to get caught telling someone else.

Colin had a blank look on his face for a moment before it clicked. "Aurors, you call them, right?"

Hermione shrank back at that and Seamus wrapped her in his arms. "No," he said, making sure his point of was clear. "We aren't on the best of terms with officials in the, uh, other… place. Just… We can get the documents from you exported, if we need to."

Hermione looked at him owlishly at that and Seamus frowned. She should have known that the Muggle police documents would be good in a wizarding court in Germany, where she and Ron had taken up residence after the war. Harry and Ginny lived there as well, and the twins and their wives were spending more and more time there and less and less in England. Germany, like all of the communist influenced countries, allowed all muggle documents to be used in their legal systems. Most countries allowed things like marriages and adoptions to stand, but the seemingly only good thing the communists had left the wizarding world with was a respect for muggle paperwork.

Ryan and Colin nodded slowly. "Uh, what, exactly, do you need us for?" his cousin asked.

Seamus turned her face so they could get a better look. "It's been happening for some years now," he told them slowly.

Hermione pulled her head back out of his hands and turned away, but the two officers had seen enough.

"Right," Colin said. "This is what we have to do…"

 

They went back to Seamus' house after a quick trip to the local healer to get her and six month old Abigail checked out. The mediwitch had questioned her in depth about the child's breathing, which Hermione had told her was asthma.

"She only get's it bad in the city, really. But Ron wouldn't move out and it was getting worse…" she'd looked up and met Seamus' eyes, her gaze sad. "I couldn't let her suffer. I had to take her to the hospital last night. That's why I had to leave," she told him, begging him to understand, like he hadn't been telling her to do just that all along.

He wondered who was telling her to stay with Ron, and hoped it wasn't Harry or Ginny. But he knew, deep in his gut, that the pair were probably trying to play down all of the things they saw and all of the things Hermione told them just to keep things from changing anymore.

That was the problem with the way they lived, not talking about anything significant with anyone else any longer.

"It's okay, Hermione. I promise, okay?" he ran a hand through her hair like he had so many time before, so long ago, before looking back down at her daughter.

Abigail Athena was small for her age, but not too small. She had the biggest blue eyes known to man kind and the reddest hair he'd seen since school. Instead of the stick straight hair the Weasley's all had, Abigail's was curly and wild, just like her mother's.

The mediwitch had given Hermione another dose of the potion she was giving Abigail to help make the problem disappear — you didn't want to do too much magic all at once to a small child, not until their magic had stabilized around three or four years old (which was when the largest bouts of accidental magic would normally occur) — then sent her off with Seamus. Hermione had looked unsure once they'd stepped away from the mediwitch's door, but Seamus had wrapped his arms around her and Abigail and Apparated them back to his house.

 

The search for Hermione Granger-Weasley and Abigail Weasley was surprisingly large. It was headed not by Hermione's husband, but by her sister- and brother-in-law. Seamus didn't tell them where she was right away, but in truth no one really thought to floo up a small pub called O'Conner's in the middle-of-no-where Ireland and ask if anyone knew where they could get into contact with Seamus Finnegan, and if so, had he seen a bushy haired witch that was with a small red-headed babe lately?

So he waited a week, until an old school friend sent an owl just to tell him that Hermione was missing — never mind that everyone knew that he'd had a huge crush on her and basically worshiped the ground she had walked on for that last bit of school, right before Hermione had gone rushing off with Harry and, and everyone knew Seamus still wasn't over her even ten years or so later. When he got the owl, he took it to Hermione, who was in the kitchen, cooking both of them dinner as Abigail played in a playpen within her line of sight.

After she read the wordy message from Susan Longbottom, nee Bones, she was quiet. "You'll have to floo her, let her know that I'm okay," she told him, after a while.

He nodded thoughtfully. "We have all the paperwork in order, to go through with the divorce and to get full custody. We even have enough evidence for jail time, if you wanted. No one can make you go back, love. And no one will." The last sentence was said forcefully.

Hermione looked at him for a moment before she threw herself into his arms. "Oh God, Seamus," she sobbed into his shoulder. "Please, just let us stay here. With you. Please."

Seamus rubbed her back and soothed her with quiet words. He looked out the window over the sink as he did so, his eyes glinting slightly in the setting sun. "No one's going to take you or Abigail away, I promise."

Seamus Finnegan hadn't ever broken his word to Hermione Granger, and he wasn't about to start now.

 

It was only a few hours after he floo'd Susan to let her know that Hermione was safe at his house that they got a call from his uncle, telling him that there were a couple of wizards looking for him and Hermione. Seamus told them they'd be right down, but asked him to send Rosalie, his cousin, down to watch Abigail for them. He didn't have to tell him to do it discretely.

When Seamus and Hermione walked in, both were tense. Harry and Ginny Potter stood in a corner with Susan and Neville Longbottom, and Bill Weasley. Hermione nearly turned and ran when she saw all of them, but Seamus kept a hand in the middle of her back, making sure she moved forward.

When Harry saw them, he stepped forward, his eyes angry. Seamus glared right back, though Hermione cowered away from Harry.

"Hermione how could you-" Harry started.

"Shut the fuck up, Potter," Seamus cut him off. It was only then that he saw five or six of his cousins sitting at the bar and a few close friends slipping in the back. It was obviously the locals, especially those related to the Finnegan's or the O'Conner's, had claimed Hermione as their's in the short amount of time she had been there, and they weren't intent on letting her go. While only two of them were witches, he didn't think that the group here had ever met muggle's quite like these ones.

"This isn't any of your business, Finnegan. In fact, I don't see why you're here at all," Harry ground out at him. Turning his eyes back to Hermione, he narrowed his eyes. "Where's Abby?"

"With Rosalie," Seamus answered for her, running his hand along Hermione's back in a soothing fashion. She looked like she was about to hyperventilate.

"Who the hell is Rosalie?" Ginny asked, her tone making it clear she didn’t really care, nor did she find it to be information that she should ever really have to know.

"My cousin. She came down to watch Abigail when my uncle called to say you were here."

In the background, he could see Susan's brow furrowing at the way the Potter's were acting. Neville looked like he couldn't believe that this was the Harry and Ginny he'd known for years, and even Bill looked troubled.

"Well let's go back and get _Abby_ from her, so Hermione and she can go home with us," Ginny told them.

Seamus started to reply, but Hermione cut him off. "No."

Harry and Ginny both looked surprised. "No? What do you mean, no? Of course you're coming home with us," Harry nearly shouted.

"No, I'm not. Neither is Abigail," Hermione told them, her voice becoming stronger as she spoke. "For the first time in her life, Abigail can breath easy. She doesn't have to work so hard, and can finally babble like a normal child. And for the first time in ten years, I haven't been hit or yelled at or had something thrown at me in over a week." She eyed all five of the others. "No, we're not going home with you."

"What? You fucking whore. It's because of him, isn't it?" Harry yelled at her, waving a hand at Seamus, like he hadn't even heard a word she said. The three behind him were staring at Hermione in wonder and Ginny looked unsure. The others in the bar were getting up, not liking the way the confrontation was going, but Seamus waved them off with a discrete hand sign.

Hermione looked like she was about to cry, but she held her ground. "Seamus has nothing to do with me leaving Ron, but I did come to Ireland because of him, yes."

"I knew it! How long have you been cheating on Ron, huh? Maybe you des-" Harry didn't get to finish his sentence. Seamus punched him in the jaw, standing over him as he fell backwards. None of the others made any moves to defend him, or help him up.

"You. Will. Not. Finish. That. Sentence. Do you understand, Potter?" he asked, his eyes flashing dangerously.

Harry opened his mouth to say something, but Ginny kicked him in the side, shutting him up. "What… I… Ron hit you?" she finally settled on asking, after stumbling over a few words.

It was like a dam broke. Hermione nodded her head, tears slowly beginning to fall. "I… If it had just been me suffering, I probably wouldn't have left. But he wouldn't move, and Abigail's asthma is worse in the city, and he kept complaining about the healer's bills from when she'd have asthma attacks and he started to throw things around when she'd cry because it sounded so harsh because she couldn't breathe well and…" Seamus pulled her into a hug, ignoring the others.

"I know love, I know. It's okay. Please, Hermione, calm down. It's okay…" he rubbed her back.

"How," Billy cleared his throat. "How long, Hermione?"

Hermione choked down her sobs, trying to calm down. Seamus answered for her. "Since the year after we graduated."

There was a strangled gasp from Susan and Ginny, and Bill's eyes hardened. Even Neville looked like he wanted to kill Ron, and Harry seemed to have calmed down a bit as well.

"Why didn't you tell anyone, Hermione?" Bill asked, not wanting to press but having to know.

"I… I tried. But no one would listen when I asked for help with his drinking, and no one would listen to me when I talked about Abigail's breathing and… I just…" Hermione was beginning to sob again.

Seamus glared at them all. "Look, you're just upsetting her. All of the paperwork that needs to be filed is filed, and the divorce papers will arrive for him tomorrow. Warn him if he doesn't sign them, we will be pressing charges. We have enough documentation to get a few years for him, if not more."

The others nodded, even Harry. "And Hermione will be getting full custody. That is not an argument, understand?"

No one fought that and within seconds, Seamus had Apparated them away.

 

When he asked her, some time later, weeks, maybe months, why she'd never healed the wounds and instead just used muggle makeup to try and cover up the worst of it when she would be seeing other people, she told him it was because she'd thought she'd deserved it.

Seamus showed her she was wrong, starting with a kiss on the mouth that slowly led to a kiss on the neck and then further down.

He never asked her again, but he made sure she never felt like she deserved something like that for the rest of her life.

 

When Abigail was almost six years old, Hermione and Seamus took her to a field near the pub where he worked and they had a picnic on Saturday. Her year old sister, Siobhan, crawled around her parents while she, stubborn child that she was - destined for Gryffindor, they claimed - attempted to fly a kite with out help.

After a few minutes of her trying and failing miserably, she brought the kite over to Seamus, her blue eyes wide and pleading. "Help me, Da!" she pleaded.

She didn't really look like Seamus, but then that was to be expected. They hadn't ever hidden the fact that she wasn't his, and she still saw the Weasley's periodically through out the year. It had taken three years or so before Harry and Hermione were on pleasant terms again, though Ginny and Hermione had patched things up sooner.

Ron, however, hadn't seen his daughter since the day Hermione left him. He'd tried, once, when he was drunk, but the Irish cops had picked him up and he'd gotten to spend the night in a Muggle jail. When he was released, the Irish Aurors were there to escort him out of the country and give him a stern warning about ever returning.

He hadn't.

Despite that she knew Molly and Arthur were her grandparents, and even called them Grandma and Grandda, she still thought of Seamus as her father, something that please both he and Hermione to no end. When they'd gotten married, she had been nearly three, and Seamus had adopted her then.

It had been a Catholic ceremony, done the muggle way, as both families were Catholic, and all of Hermione's family was muggle. Most of Seamus' was as well, with just his mother and two or three of his cousins as witches and him as a wizard.

As she sat next to her husband, Hermione titled her head to the side at her daughter's tone of voice, grabbing Siobhan as she attempted to crawl of the blanket. "Say please first, Abigail."

The five year old rolled her eyes, brushing her red curls behind her head and still managing not to drop the kite, just like her mother did with books. "Please, Da?" Seamus grinned as he stood and took the kite from her, leading her out into the field. After a few moments, the kite was flying and Abigail was shrieking with joy as she ran beside Seamus.

As she watched, Hermione smiled and pulled Siobhan into a hug, thinking that maybe for once, it was good to forget the past and just look at what they had now.


End file.
